More Interviews

Monday morning rolled around and I was facing down a meeting with my recruiter to prep and then three interviews throughout the day. I woke up about 6am to get ready. This was three hours before I needed to be anywhere, but it takes a good hour to get into city center from where I am staying and I wanted to stop by the shopping center and do some internet research before I headed in.

As a note on showers in Ireland, most that I have used are actually set up with what they call an “electric shower,” which is essentially a little electric regulator and pump with an instant hot kind of heater in it. You set the temperature you want and then just push a button to turn it on. The electric unit itself heats the water, so you aren’t using the water from the hot water heater. This, I assume, allows you to have a smaller water heater that costs less to keep warm for warm faucet water or dishwashers and the like, but allows for fast access to hot water for a shower. Some have spray strength adjustments as well. Water pressure in Ireland is no where near what we are used to in the US, so the amount of water you get out of the head, even on high, some might find a bit lacking (especially on a cold day). It is no worse than a water conserving showerhead, though.

I went through my morning routine and had a bowl of cereal, then headed to the center to research my first interview. After a short stint there I jumped on the train and headed down town for my meeting with John at 9am. He set me up with website print outs for the firms I was meeting with and gave me directions on how to get from one place to the next.

My first interview was at 11am with RKD - a fairly corporate company located about thirty minutes walk from the heart of the city. It was set up inside two adjacent renovated row houses, which was surprising for such a large firm (100+ people), but I found this is very common for the areas around city center. I have walked along many streets filled with row houses and all of them have been refitted as offices.

The man I met with was one of their directors. A fairly straightforward fellow, but personable and we got on well. The interview seemed to stay on a positive note, though he was somewhat concerned about the scale of work I had done previously versus the work he was doing at the time. When it was done I felt fairly good about the interview, but put RKD towards the middle of the pack for my interest, given the kind of work they were doing, their location, and the feel I got off of the interview.

This firm, as you know from a previous post, decided not to hire me based on applicable experience.

My next interview was with Traynor O'Toole. They were only about a 10 minute walk away from RKD, but wasn’t until 3pm. I had about two and a half hours to kill, so I found a little sandwich shop with a seating area, ordered something that sounded safe (my system was still not yet completely settled, especially when considering the added stress of going to interviews) and read up on the next two interviews from the information my recruiter printed out. I decided to get to this interview a bit early to see if I could get a little extra time between interviews, because it was going to be a good hour long walk from my second interview to the third.

This company was also taking up two adjacent row houses, though they were a bit smaller in number of people. For the meeting we headed down to the basement level, which they had stripped down to the old stone that it was originally made from, and the area there was just beautiful. The interview seemed to go well enough, though I didn’t get very much energy from the two people I interviewed with (one of the founders, O’Toole, and another director). They just didn’t seem to be responding with the kind of energy I was looking for when we were discussing design and their practice. They were both still very nice and we had a good long conversation, which ended with one of them showing me around their office. Because of the low energy during the interview and the work they were doing not looking like what I was going for, this company ended up lower on my list of interest.

As we know, this was the first company that offered me a position in their firm.

I then headed across town for my final interview of the day at Oppermann Associates. This firm was located on the north side of Dublin city center (IE on the north side of the River Liffey). The north side of Dublin is known as their trouble area. It is where the cheaper housing is available, so is also where all of the lower income and immigrant workers end up. It is also where most of the violence and murders occur in the city. This didn’t exactly put me at ease in relation to having a meeting there at 5pm that wouldn’t let out until after dark. The woman I am staying with also told me that I would be murdered going there after dark, sort of in jest, but not really… I made the walk in less time than expected and found it without too much difficulty. The firm was on a side street, but it didn’t strike me as particularly dangerous once I got there.

This was a firm I was very excited about. They are a medium sized firm (40+ people) doing medium scale projects, but all of their completed work looked to have been done with a very good attention to detail and care for design. They also were doing quite a bit of education work, which has always been something I have been interested in working on. I met with one of their directors and their HR person (who basically just sat through the interview quietly listening, dropping in a question or comment here and there) and the interview started out with the director describing the position she was looking to fill (basically a construction and project manager), which I recognize I didn’t have the experience to handle. I brought this to her attention, but we continued with the interview and it seemed to go along very well. She seemed like a great person, grounded in the realities of architecture, but still focused on putting together quality design. I liked her quite a bit and was further excited about the prospect of working for them, but recognized that it was a long shot, given their specific position availability. By the end of the interview they agreed that I wouldn’t be able to fill the position they had started out looking for, but suggested that they would look to see if they could find a spot where I could fit in.

This firm ended up rejecting me based on the position they were actually looking to fill.

All in all it was a very long day, but I felt good about how everything went. As I was walking back south from the streets of north Dublin I didn’t feel at all in danger. There were plenty of people walking around, heading home from work, and it just felt like any other neighborhood in Dublin, though it had more of a dingy aura about it. I could see how I wouldn’t necessarily want to be walking around here late at night if I were living here. Then again I don’t know how comfortable I would feel walking around anywhere late at night in a city (like coming home from a late night at the pubs – which is any night going to a pub with the Irish…), areas in Portland included.

I headed home for a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and then off to bed to prepare for the next day.